


What Once Was Mine

by CheerUpLovely



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, loss of family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-04-23 04:10:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4862615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheerUpLovely/pseuds/CheerUpLovely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are lost to him in flame and fire.</p>
<p>Of all the ways he imagined them being taken from him, he never imagines this. He fears revenge being extracted upon them, fears the violence of their darkened city betraying them. He fears ransoms, hostage situations and worse, but he doesn’t imagine someone tampering with their car so that it catapults into an explosion that claims the lives of six people that day.</p>
<p>His wife. His daughter.</p>
<p>Gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Once Was Mine

They are lost to him in flame and fire.

Of all the ways he imagined them being taken from him, he never imagines this. He fears revenge being extracted upon them, fears the violence of their darkened city betraying them. He fears ransoms, hostage situations and worse, but he doesn’t imagine someone tampering with their car so that it catapults into an explosion that claims the lives of six people that day.

His wife. His daughter.

Gone.

He stumbles through his home blindly. Thea’s with him, but he doesn’t hear a word she says and can’t hear her tears over his own. He’s too busy wandering through the worst moments of his life that are hidden among the toys discarded on the floor, the dolls on the kitchen work counter that Ava played with before school that morning, the half eaten cereal bowl they didn’t have time to empty before rushing out on the school run, the pile of laundry waiting to go back into her closet.

He makes his way up the stairs, his hand pausing on the banister where Felicity’s coat is hanging, because she forgot it in their rush that morning. He steps over the stuffed rabbit on the second stair, doesn’t feel the lego brick that digs into his heel, doesn’t move the pair of dress-up fairy wings that are laid against the wall.

He stands in the hallway, in the space between his bedroom and his daughter’s, and he doesn’t know where to go. He can’t go into his bedroom, not the room he shared with his wife. He can’t lie in their bed where they made love, where they shared their most intimate conversations, where they created their baby daughter. He can’t slip beneath those sheets when she’s never coming back to them.

And it hits him.

They’ll never come back to this house.

His bedroom door ajar, he turns to his daughter’s room and steps inside. Her room’s messy, always is, toys strewn across the floor with a perfect clear path that leads to a bed that mimics the princess theme she adored. She’s started telling him that she wouldn’t be a Queen until she became a good enough princess and he thought it was foolish because she was the very essence of a Queen to him. He takes a seat on her mattress, smooths his hand over the sheet, and his heart hitches when he brings a far softer, woollen fabric into his hands.

Blankie.

He doesn’t associated his cries of pain with his own voice, but his agony is loud enough to draw his sister upstairs to the room and for her to kneel in front of them. He buries his face into the green wool until only his streaming eyes are visible and all he can think about is that his sister’s hands on his face aren’t as comforting as Felicity’s would have been.

“Sh-she needs this,” he croaks between his sobs, his fingers tightly wrapped in the Blankie that Ava took everywhere with her. “She can’t sleep without it.”

“Ollie-,” his sister chokes out, but he shakes his head desperately.

“ _No_ , she won’t be able to sleep without it,” he sobs. “She can’t sleep. I have to take it to her, she won’t sleep. She’ll be so scared without it.”

“Ollie, you need to breathe-”

“I didn’t tuck her in tonight,” he cries. “I didn’t…read to her, didn’t tell her I loved her, I didn’t…do anything. I… _she won’t sleep_ , Thea.”

“She’s sleeping, Ollie,” she whispers.

She’s not sleeping. His daughter is dead.

–

He doesn’t identify their bodies. He can’t. Captain Lance takes care of it for him, but his eyes are red raw when he brings around the bag of possessions that were saved from the car, all of them charred and burnt. Mixed items from Felicity’s handbag, her lipstick case - the lipstick inside melted - her compact mirror, her keys, her half-melted wallet, Ava’s bookbag, Felicity’s earrings, her necklace.

Her wedding ring.

He slips it into his little finger, beside the one she placed on his hand.

He cries onto his mother-in-law’s shoulder as they mourn the loss of the brightest smiles they’ve ever known.

–

He doesn’t sleep in his own bed. He can’t. It’s theirs, and it never feels right without her, whether it’s because she’s away on a business trip or…now. He sleeps in Ava’s tiny bed, curled up on his side, surrounded by the remnants of the life that he built and this tiny person he created, loved and lost.

His wife and daughter lie in a funeral home. He had to pick coffins for them. That coffins even come in Ava’s size is criminal. Hers will be pink. The plaque for her name is shaped like a unicorn. Felicity’s is the same soft pine wood she filled their home with when she insisted that they weren’t sophisticated enough for mahogany. He cannot speak as Donna and Thea make arrangements to bury these girls they love. This was their daughter, their sister, their niece, their granddaughter. This is the last thing they can do to show how loved they were.

But this is his wife, and his daughter, and he will never be ready to let them go.

–

He shuts down after the funeral. After they bury them. After his wife who is claustrophobic and his daughter who is scared of the dark are lowered into holes in the ground that will be their new home. The Queen family plot is too full of life that was taken too soon, and while their friends speak about what a light they brought to this world and how they hope they are at peace, all Oliver wants is to be in the ground with them. If he cannot have them back, he can at least follow them into oblivion where he can be with them forever.

He had to choose their favourite dresses to be buried in; Felicity’s a deep blue expensive gown that looked far more subtle than it cost, Ava’s her Elsa Frozen gown, and it breaks his heart that the girls who brought so much bright pink to his life go into the ground in a more favoured blue. He sees them before the coffins are closed, and says his goodbyes.

He kisses his wife’s forehead and remembers times when this was all he could do, to love her from a distance. But he has loved her up close now and he doesn’t think he’ll ever remember how to feel love again. She barely looks like his wife anymore, so charred from the accident that he wants to convince himself that this isn’t her, but there’s an arrow tattooed into her inner wrist that he can’t deny is hers. He tells her how much he loves her, tells her to take care of their little girl like he couldn’t and he tells her that he will never, ever, be able to thank her enough for this world that she gave him. She has given him love, given him life, reminded him how to be a human being, carried his child, built him a family, and now she is lost to him. He kisses her goodnight one final time. It’s not enough.

He wraps his daughter in Blankie. It’s large enough to engross her, and he knows she won’t sleep well without it. It pains him more to see her so burnt and ruined because he saw her come into the world as a brand new creation of perfection, and it isn’t fair that she has seen such little life and has been torn away from them so brutally. He will never take her to school again, never drop her off for summer camp, never buy her prom dress, never walk her down the aisle on her wedding day, never hold the grandchildren she’d haven’t given him, never pass on his family legacy to this little wonder he’d wanted to spend more than five years loving because five years is not enough time to love a child. How do you fit it all into five years? So he kisses her burnt forehead, reads her one last bedtime story, and tucks her in beneath Blankie.

He collapses after. He doesn’t remember vomiting outside the funeral home or how he got home.

–

He shuts down after.

The Arrow in him remembers that he lost them to an explosion that wasn’t natural.

When they are at rest, he works to avenge them.

–

He finds the men responsible and slaughters them all. It’s messy, it’s violent, and it leads him all to the man who masterminded it and he doesn’t care who he is, or what his motives were, and he doesn’t care that the carnage that lead him here has turned the Arrow into a media spectacle again.

He doesn’t care that this man is stronger than him, that he is unarmed, or that he will, ultimately, be dying now.

Death is what he came for.

The Arrow remains on bent knees, clutching his hand around a small square of Blankie that contains his wife’s wedding and engagement rings, and he waits for death. He knows the world will soon know who he really is, and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that his death is going to be livestreamed on the internet, doesn’t care about the camera in his face. He doesn’t care that these are his last moments because they are the agonising few moments that now separate him from them.

Everything is for them.

“Wait for me,” he whispers, as he clutches Blankie and the rings and hopes they will cement his soul to them. “Wait for me, I’ll be there soon. We’ll be together again.”

“Choose your last words carefully, Green Arrow.”

He already knows what those words will be.

“I love you, Felicity. I love you, Ava.”

–

_“Today the Starling City Police Department confirmed the rumours from last night’s internet broadcast that co-CEO of Queen Incorporated, Oliver Queen, was the hooded vigilante known as the Arrow. His body was identified in the costume in the early hours of this morning holding possessions of his recently deceased wife of seven years, Felicity Queen and five year old daughter, Ava Queen. The death is being treated as suspicious and the police are confident that his death relates to the explosion that killed his family two weeks ago. Anyone with any information pertaining to either incident should contact the SCPD. The family of the three sadly deceased have asked for privacy in this very upsetting time.”_


End file.
